Booka Shade
EVE
Release Date: Nov 4, 2013
Genre(s): Electronic, House, Pop/Rock, Club/Dance, Left-Field House
Record label: Embassy of Music
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Album Review: EVE by Booka Shade
Fairly Good, Based on 3 Critics
Based on rating 8/10
In search of creative cohesion after fruitless sessions and a near split, Booka Shade's Arno Kammermeier and Walter Merziger headed to Greater Manchester, England -- as a roots rock band might seek to absorb and explore its ancestry in Memphis -- to record their fifth proper album. Rather than book time at Spirit Studios, where 808 State recorded some of their earliest and best work, they went to a different facility and apparently enjoyed the experience enough to name this set after it. EVE has the undeniable edge in vitality when compared to More!, the duo's previous album, and there's much more depth and variety.
Based on rating 3/5
Walter Merziger and Arno Kammermeier have it easy. UK dance producers carry the ‘let’s push things forward’ thing round their necks like an albatross. The Americans think that if their tracks don’t have the horsepower of a Harrier jump jet, it’s not loud enough. Meanwhile, because they’re Germans, this stratospherically successful production duo are free to get on with making immaculate, tactile house music.
Based on rating 2.0/5
Booka Shade's fifth album is billed as a dramatic rebirth. Having come close to splitting up, the Berlin duo set up shop at the Eve residential studio in Manchester (hence the title) and reportedly rediscovered their mojo while writing this album from scratch.You would struggle to discern that from Eve's bland opening tracks. The first song (a trite use of the reggae standard "Many Rivers To Cross") and the lead single "Love Inc" both sound like overtures to daytime radio.
'EVE'
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